I was in a retail toy store the other day and the owner randomly asked me what I thought he could do to improve his sales. He is leasing a nice store front in a small strip mall but off the beaten path. I told him that his location sucked. He looked shocked but ultimately agreed. I also told him that that’s OK. “I have successfully run plenty of retail store fronts in lousy locations.” I assumed he got a screaming deal on the lease and he had. Let’s save your business.
In my past life I was a pre-sales engineer and the resident subject matter expert or SME before it was called that. I was one of those rare birds that could sell and build solutions. I could be “salesy” if needed or as technical as it gets. I also, as a left and right brainier, could ascertain some of the trending marketing directions easily to become instrumental in helping the sales team focus their efforts accordingly. This last part turned out to be more important, or at least as important, as understanding how the product actually worked.
Years before it was penned crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe in Wired Magazine I was involved with this concept and watched it work quite well. A friend’s small car dealership was looking for a new jingle for their radio ads. Instead of hiring a marketing company (or using an internal employee) they put the word out that anyone in Austin could submit a jingle and the winner would receive $1000 bucks! The response was incredible and the jingle is still being used 20+ years later. A key ingredient to this success was the location as Austin TX was/is packed full of singer songwriters. We’ll talk more about that later.
I recently investigated Foursquare, Yowza!! and others. I’m not a game guy and definitely don’t use coupons but this mobile presence idea is intriguing to me and should be to you.